


The Sea Is All I Know

by Mendax



Category: Mag - Fandom, The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: F/M, POV Outsider, Platonic OTP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 21:09:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3089846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/pseuds/Mendax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yeah, the tags say het, but that doesn't mean Buck doesn't love Chris more than anything or anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sea Is All I Know

Will had been dead — swallowed up by the sea for certain gone — four months when I got Cousin Gloria’s letter. She’d lost her husband too. He’d been shot dead right in their own store, leaving Gloria and the children alone in that wild and dangerous town. Dangerous or not, though, I was glad of her offer. As long as I was in our little dockside rooms with the stink of fish and the shriek of the gulls, I would forever expect Will to walk back through the door, pushing his knit cap off his blond curls as his bag dropped from his shoulder, his arms as eager for me as I was to be in them.

Leaving those squalid rooms we’d shared was wrenching. It was like in leaving them, I was finally acknowledging that Will was coming back to me no more. But it was for the best. After weary miles by train and coach, my bones jostled and my heart grieved, I emerged squinting against the dusty desert sun not Mrs. Will Taft, but Gloria’s Cousin Mae, who had a whole new life ahead of her.

I was met by Cousin Gloria, whom I had not seen since I was a child but found to be the same pleasant-faced, smiling woman I remembered, if softened by years and childbirth. She bore the marks of her husband’s death on her pretty face the same as I wore mine. It’s easy to see if you know what to look for. I’d never noticed before I lost Will, but after, I felt I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing widows and widowers, people I’m sure I’d seen dozens of times before without noting, but now I couldn’t help seeing this horrible kinship.

Gloria kindly helped with the two bags that held all I owned anymore, and pointed out the important buildings of her town — my town now too, I supposed. 

There wasn’t much to say for it, save that it was so very different than where I’d come from. Instead of steep, twisting alleys spread like cracked glass from the docks, the smell of fish and salt and men just off the boats, and the calls of merchants trying to make themselves heard above each other and the omnipresent gulls, there was just one wide street with a couple half-hearted spurs, as if folk had thought about building more but just given up. The buildings looked worn and faded, and when a gust of wind sent a sand dervish dancing down the road, I could see why. I already felt covered in fine grit, and very much in need of drink of water. I suspected both sensations would be near constant.

The children, Gloria informed me, were in school. I wasn’t sure why they needed schooling, seeing as how Gloria had already taught them all to read and do their sums. Gloria, though, had been thrilled when a schoolteacher settled in their town. The school building was being built at one end of the town, and meanwhile the children and their teacher met in the church.

Gloria had explained the church to me, but I confess I didn’t quite understand. It seems there were no regular services, though a preacher had taken up residence and done a great deal of work to refurbish the building, which had been long vacant. When I asked why the town didn’t find a preacher who actually preached, Gloria informed me that they had become quite happy with Mr. Sanchez, and that in these parts, the church was more like the undertaker’s — you didn’t have to go every week to know it would be there for you when you needed it. 

She sounded fond as she said it, so it didn’t sound quite as heretical as it otherwise may have. I thought I just might like it in this place. 

It didn’t take me long to settle into my new life. I was a good worker, and Gloria was kind and appreciative of my help. It also didn’t take long to learn how much the town revolved around two points: the woman newspaper editor and widowed daughter-in-law of the circuit judge, Mary Travis, and the seven incongruous not-quite lawmen hired by Judge Travis who kept the peace when they weren’t busy disturbing it.

Gloria had advice for me about all seven, and after a while I formed my own ideas as well. There was the preacher, Josiah Sanchez, whom Gloria seemed to have a soft spot for though I couldn’t quite see why. Gloria said he got lost in his own mind sometimes, but not to pay it any mind, to carry on and he would eventually re-join you. 

The unofficial leader, Chris Larabee, was also a favorite of hers, and that was less of a mystery. He was undeniably attractive in a brooding, dangerous sort of way, was unfailingly polite, and never bought on credit. I think perhaps every woman in town was secretly a little in love with Mr. Larabee. He was a widower. I never liked spending time with him; he wore his grief too openly for comfort. Gloria said it used to be so much worse, but I have a hard time imagining it.

Then there was the healer, Nathan Jackson, whom Gloria always treated well. She even made little donations to his supplies here and there from her own merchandise. I couldn’t credit a black doctor at first, but Gloria soon set me straight on that score. He certainly was gently spoken and knew his business, and most folk seemed to downright respect him.

Vin Tanner, I was told, wasn’t nearly as wooly as he appeared. I didn’t care how wild he seemed, he was a pleasant sight in any case and had the prettiest blue eyes I’d seen since Will. It always made me a little shy of him, which seemed, in turn, to make him a little shy of me. Since during the first week I was there I saw him gun a man down in the street without a flinch, I always found that amusing.

I couldn’t quite figure why the swell, Ezra Standish, was part of this rough-seeming bunch, but Gloria said he could handle himself better than you might expect. She also said he was the kind of man a woman need never fear for her virtue with — this with a significant glance, as if I hadn’t spent half my life dockside and didn't know exactly what was meant by that — but that he was not to be extended store credit on any account.

There was something about JD Dunne that made him seem even younger than his years. He was all big eyes and bravado. After some of the tales Gloria had told me I was amazed he hadn’t met his end in a town as rough as this one. Even I could see how good he was for the others though — for the whole town really. 

And then there was Buck. Buck Wilmington, who came by to introduce himself the very first day of my arrival and hasn’t stopped trying to charm me since, for all he doesn’t have to anymore. Buck, with his sparkling eyes and ready smile, those long legs and lean hips that make him look like every picture of a wrangler I’d ever seen on the cover of those silly pocket novels. Buck, whose unexpected, powerful sympathy the first time I spoke to him about Will — which was the first time I’d spoken to _anyone_ about Will in anything but the most general way — unleashed a horrible torrent of grief. Buck, who then held me in his arms as gentle as a mother with her babe and let me dampen his shirtfront without trying a thing.

Gloria had warned me about Buck. Said he was a bit of a rake, and that if a woman wanted to keep her good name, she wouldn’t pass too much of her time in his company. And bless her if it wasn’t true — but I found, Gloria’s kindness and the debt I owed her notwithstanding, my good name seemed a small price to pay.

Oh, I knew what Buck wanted all right, and I knew it didn’t have anything to do with marriage or setting up a life together. That was fine by me. My heart was still Will’s. It didn’t have room for anyone else.

And Buck’s heart ... well, that was something else.

When I was with Will, I knew he loved me. He loved me more than he’d ever loved anyone else; loved me so much it didn’t matter to him I couldn’t give him children. He was even faithful to me, unlike so many sailors and their wives — and before you call me a fool for believing that, you think twice, because you didn’t know Will.

Will would have died for me and blessed me as he did it. But for all that, I wasn’t — and could never be — first in his heart. And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it, because his first love wasn’t another woman, it was the sea. 

The sea had a hold of him I couldn’t understand and he couldn’t explain. It was in his blood and bones. I think if you took him away from the sea and dumped him in a place like I found myself now, he would have wasted away to nothing. He would have died for me, but without the sea, he couldn’t have lived.

I found some solace in Buck’s arms. Some solace, and a great deal of pleasure. He does know how to make a woman feel good, both in bed and in her own heart. And there’s a joy in him that makes you feel as if you’re doing something for him when he’s doing something for you. It’s hard to explain, but it’s there. If I were other than I was, I think I could have fallen in love with Buck. But it’s good for me that I did not.

Because Buck loves women — not any one specific woman, but women in general and as a whole — and he’s good to them as much as he can be, though I imagine he’s broken more than one heart along the way. But after I’d been in town for a while, I started seeing something else.

I’ve said nearly every woman in town was secretly a little in love with Chris Larabee. Buck is Chris’s oldest friend. He knew Chris’s wife, and their little son, both of whom died in a tragic fire. He knew Chris Larabee when he was happy, and he knew him when his grief wasn’t a disfiguring scar but a gaping, bleeding wound that was nearly the end of him. 

Buck didn’t just love Chris. He loved Chris the way Will loved the sea. With an unreasoning, inexplicable love that had nothing to do with the way he might love a woman but went all the way to his blood and his bones.

I hope someday Buck can find a woman to love, who will love him back, and who will love him despite knowing. 

And I hope Buck’s love for Chris will not mean for him what the sea meant for Will.


End file.
